Howard Cole of Forbes feels the Dodgers should get Lucroy

Phil Gurnee ♦ June 29, 2016 ♦ 2 Comments

I have, to be honest,  I go to Forbes for business information, certainly did not expect to run into a fairly well-written Dodger article.  If you click the link you will find that Howard Cole feels the Dodgers should do what it takes to acquire Jonathan Lucroy and either Sonny Gray or Julio Tehran.

Now close your eyes and picture Jonathan Lucroy behind the plate instead of Yasmani Grandal. Open them again and watch Grandal chase a passed ball to the screen.

Lucroy is clearly the better catcher right now.

Yet, just one year ago on June 29th, no one would have argued that Lucroy was better than Grandal. At this time last year this was the story:

For further perspective, Lucroy is 30 years old and a free agent after 2017. Grandal is only 27 and can’t be a free agent until 2019.

It is easy to see why fans are excited about the prospect of acquiring a bat like Lucroy, but I have to feel this is recency bias.  This is the most that Grandal has ever struggled, his career OPS+ is 110. Grandal has never had a full season OPS+ below 110.  Of course,  that will change this year, hard to imagine Grandal getting to that level this year. Lucroy has a career OPS+ of 111,  they have been basically the same offensive player until this year. This year Lucroy is having his career offensive season, Grandal is having his career worst season.

Do you trade for someone having their career season at age 30?

Do you trade someone having their career worst season at age 27?

I don’t. I fully expect Grandal to if not out hit Lucroy from this point on, at least match him. I could point to all sorts of advanced metrics as to why I believe this, but if you got this far, you are probably already sleepy. Let’s check back in a few months and see if I whiffed or not.

As far as making a play for Sonny Gray or Julio Tehran, I’ll save that for another day because I’ve yet to give it any thought.